


Red

by ShallWeSingInPopSense



Series: Redemption [2]
Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: ##16th century wasn't great for the gays. Major character death. sorry., Angst, Jewish!Nathaniel, M/M, Polish!Marc, cute dates and death, mer!Nathaniel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-22
Updated: 2018-10-22
Packaged: 2019-08-06 03:41:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,046
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16380698
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShallWeSingInPopSense/pseuds/ShallWeSingInPopSense
Summary: Red is the colour of the sunset at sea,Blue is the colour of his lover's lucky charm.Blue is the colour of his lover's lips,Red is the colour of a merman's rage.A prequel to 'Redemption of a sea monster' but can be read as a standalone





	Red

Red was always Nathaniel’s favourite colour.

He could only vaguely remember seeing Marc for the first time; there was a constant slew of sailors on and off the ‘Black Swallow’ after all, and due to his status as an educated and skilled cartographer’s apprentice, he had been strongly encouraged not to fraternise with the sailors. Therefore, he could only just about remember Marc’s red hooded jerkin as he stood slightly apart from the other sailors.

He did however remember the first time they spoke.

The sunset was stunning, streaks of vermilion and amber reflected on the water as if the sea itself was in flames. Nathaniel had swung up the rigging to the crow’s nest, setting out his watercolour paints before outlining the wisps of cloud in the scene before him.

He was raised from his artistic endeavours as a dark head popped over the rim of the crow’s nest.

“Gah sorry, I didn’t realise anyone was up here.”

“It’s fine, just about enough room up here for two.” Nathaniel replied with a smile, and the man clambered over the side. “I am Nathaniel Kurzberg by the way, the cartographer’s apprentice, nice to meet you.”

“I…um…I am Marc, Marc Verca,” He held out a hand, and Nathaniel shook it firmly. “This is a nice spot for painting I bet…”

“That it is.” Nathaniel smiled into the fading light. Marc drew a notebook out of his jerkin, and Nathaniel glanced at him sideways, “Do you also draw?”

“Me? Oh no. I write. The crew call me Verses, because I…um… tell stories. And people come to me if they want letters from home read or written.” Marc stuck a hand behind his head, embarrassed at his own babbling, “But I guess all artists can find inspiration in the beauty of the setting sun, right?”

“Indeed we can,” Nathaniel fiddled with the rim of his skullcap, “Though to be fair I am up here most nights, sunset or not.” He half wished he wished he was better at small talk, but the awkwardness was quickly gone as Marc focused on scratching in his notebook, humming a gentle tune as he worked.

Taking his brush, Nathaniel stirred water into his paints, reviving a bright shade of red.

He decided it was nice to have company.

                                                                                888

It was rare for the cartographers to socialise with the crew, and yet, after several stunning sunsets spent in the crow’s nest together, Nathaniel was sitting in the corner of the mess hall with his notebook.

Marc was a different person when he told his stories, his usually shy self filled with his characters as he painted his tale to the other sailors. With grand arm gestures he gave the latest episode of the adventures of Captain Coccinelle, dashing pirate and vagabond, as he saved that evenings damsel in distress; Ella Strator, an attractive red-head snatched while painting on the beach.

Though Nathaniel didn’t look up from the jotter he was sketching in, Marc could have sworn he saw the man’s mouth twitch into a smile at his antics.

It seemed that Captain Coccinelle had a new fan.

In the morning, Marc found a page of sketches of Captain Coccinelle and Ella Strator tucked into the rope of his hammock.

He covered his grin with his hand.

                                                                                888

Marc’s shoulders were tense as he stared out over the water.

“Are you on mermaid watch?” Nathaniel asked, and Marc tore his gaze from the sea long enough to smile at him.

“Yup. Apparently this area is rife with them.” Marc’s tone was falsely nonchalant, and his fingers restlessly plucked at a blue-and-green lucky charm around his neck. “Though I am not sure that it would make any difference even if we knew one was nearby. The stories say they have the faces of angels, and their voices can charm the sanity from any sailor…” His eyes scanned the water “…only to drag them to depths of the sea and feast upon their blood to fuel their everlasting desire for vengeance.”          

“That’s…dramatic.” Nathaniel commented.

“I heard that once upon a time they were human woman who died violently and seek the love they did not receive in life, so they sell their souls to the sea god Dussu, spirt of emotion and voyages.” Marc flipped the charm in his hands, “It is almost sad.”

Nathaniel had heard the whispers of Dussu before. He knew he had been brought up in a fairly religion-centric community, but he could never understand how many sailors were simultaneously Christian and believers in these strange nature spirits. It felt to him that only those who were desperate would turn to such beings. Then again, a life at sea was often fraught with dangers.

“I doubt mermaids would care for sentiment. I don’t think there is much that would deter them.”

“There is one thing…” Marc held up the bright enamel disk up for Nathaniel to inspect. “It’s a seafarer’s charm. It contains a piece of Dussu, and so sea creatures will recognise it and, hopefully, choose to leave the sailor unmolested.” He tucked it back into the palm of his hand, “It was my uncle’s before he died, and his father’s before that. By passing it on, your ancestors can pass on their protection, and so the charm becomes stronger with each generation. And if I retire, I will pass it on to my family.”

 “Do you really believe there is a god in that trinket?” Nathaniel looked down at the charm sceptically.

“I do. Just a fragment, like a blessing. And a fragment of my ancestors. And a fragment of me too I guess.” Marc caught Nathaniel’s tone, and stuck the lucky charm back into his shirt. “Look, let’s not argue about this. You have your god and I have mine and let’s leave it at that. And I believe my god will prevent mermaids from dragging me to the bottom of the ocean and eating my face. Which is pretty comforting right now.”

Nathaniel gave a huff of laughter.

“Apparently they lure you down by offering your heart’s desire.” He leaned over the banister, “If some watery woman popped up right now offering freshly made cheese pierogi I would be over the edge in a heartbeat.”

And just like that the tension between them was released.

“I am sick of smoked fish that is for sure.” Marc laughed, “I think I would be right with you.”

                                                                                                888

As he mapped the coastline, Nathaniel absently found himself humming the tune that Marc so often hummed as they sat together in the crow’s nest. He tried to shake it out of his head and focus solely on his work, but the tune, it seemed, was addictive.

He smiled as he picked up a telescope.

How strange.

                                                                                                888

They were in the crow’s nest again.

“What is that song? The one that you always hum? It is not a shanty I have heard anyone else sing.”

“Oh…it is a traditional song… I guess it doesn’t really fit the mood of ship life.” Marc stuck a hand behind his head, embarrassed. “It’s about a swallow trapped in a church. Or perhaps it is about the wishes and dreams that we hold within us that are so very powerful, and yet are trapped by our circumstances, our society and religion…” he petered out.

“You truly have a writers mind Marc,” Nathaniel laughed softly. “Can you…sing it for me?”

There was a slight pause, and Marc looked out to sea, nervously licking his lips.

“ _A swallow, sister to the tempest…”_ Marc’s voice was quiet, but rich nonetheless. Nathaniel closed his eyes. “… _Mourning on wings, soaring above those heads in which she sorrowfully strays…”_

Nathaniel’s heart swelled with the dream he wished for, the dream that he longed to released. The words so softly sung sketching futures in his eyes as the song progressed.

“… _A swallow, flash of lightning in an oppressive church,_

 _Lacerates, like black scissors, the dread which overwhelms her_ ”

Wistfully, the song came to an end, and Marc smiled as he took in Nathaniel’s reaction, his earlier embarrassment forgotten. “There is another verse, but I prefer to end it with the hope of breaking free.”

“That was…stunning” Nathaniel found his voice, and Marc gave him a toothy grin.

“I can write down the words if you like?” Marc took his red bound notebook into his hands.

In that moment, Nathaniel’s dream was to sing that song with Marc, just the two of them, together, nestled in the rigging where only the birds could witness them.

“Yes. I would like that very much.”

                                                                                                888

Marc gritted his teeth as he hauled on a rope. The work of a sailor was monotonous, but he usually had his daydreams to keep him entertained, creating a story throughout the day to recite to the rest of the crew each night. Though not today. Today his mind was fixed on a re-occurring idea, one that was both thrilling and impossible, and entirely unrepeatable to the crew.

And yet he could not turn his mind from it.

                                                                                                888

Marc let out a growl of frustration, batting the back of his notebook against the rim of the crow’s nest.

“Writers block?” Nathaniel asked, trying to keep the coy tone out of his voice.

Marc gave a huff of laughter.

“A bit” he admitted, “I just feel like I have come to a bit of a lull in the story.” He twirled the pencil in his fingers, “I mean Captain Coccinelle is dashing and romantic, but all he really does is fight and save a succession of damsels without really making any lasting impacts on people.” Marc’s gaze dropped, “what is the point of having adventures without having a home to go to?”

Nathaniel cocked his head.

“Are you…homesick?” he asked gently.

“No! No… I just…” Marc closed his book, “I just think that as a romantic hero, Captain Coccinelle should have a more permanent love interest.”

“No way, you are lovesick?!” Nathaniel asked incredulously.

“I just think the story could do with a little love.” Marc held up his hands with a strangled laugh, “Believe me when I say I am not ready to go courting.”

“Don’t worry I am not going to interrogate you as to what brought this on.” Nathaniel laughed, but his hands were twisting. “Who are you thinking? There have been a couple of good adventures with Coccinelle and Ella Strator…maybe they would make a good pair?”

“The problem is that Capitan Coccinelle is a pirate and a commoner, while Ella Strator is an educated woman of reasonable social standing. Why would she notice him when she would surely have many better suitors a who are a better match?” Marc’s voice was low, and Nathaniel’s knuckles were white as he wrung his hands, “Why would she choose a forbidden romance when she could be happy?”

“Just because it is forbidden doesn’t mean she wouldn’t be happy.” And now Nathaniel was still, very still indeed as he picked out his next words, “And besides, Captain Coccinelle may be relatively uneducated, but he has a great many redeeming qualities; he is resourceful, he has a wonderful sense of humour, and from your descriptions, he is pretty easy on the eye.”

“Maybe. But a forbidden romance would never be easy… I mean if I was in love I would want to scream it into the sunset and shower my love in kisses till our friends tell us to stop being so gross.” Marc would not meet his eye, “But at the end of the day you fall for who you fall for, and even a secret love is better than pretending.”

Nathaniel gazed studiously at the sea stretching below them, vast and unknown as the words between men.

“The best things in life are not easy…I am not sure the if the crew would enjoy Strator as a love interest…” his words faltered, “…but I know I do.” Nathaniel whispered, dragging his eyes from the horizon to the man before him, “Maybe we could keep this plot point between the two of us…”

Marc looked up at him, green eyes filled with something nameless. Nathaniel slowly brought up his hand to cup Marc’s cheek, slowly, hesitantly, as though too fast a movement could break the world between them.

Red was the colour of Marc’s cheeks as the space between them diminished, closer and closer till the red of their lips met each and became one.

 

And the pair shared their time together. Glances between them as Marc worked on the deck and Nathaniel mapped the coast. Pressed into each other in the delightfully cramped crows’ nest. Walking together on shore leave, notebooks in their hands. Writing their story.

And sometimes, when they were very, very sure they were alone, the sweetest of colours would bloom between them, hot and omnipresent, demanding to be felt, before leaving them shivering and warm in each other’s arms, lips tender from their frenzied caresses and fingers still wandering.

And they wished for an eternity together.

But eternity they did not have. The era was not kind to people such as them.

They got caught.

Nathaniel’s world was black.

He could see, far below him, two bodies, side by side in death as they should have been in life.

Swathed in the soft glow of the full moon, he could see their crew mates, the men Marc had once considered friends, the ones who had once listened to his stories. He could see the master of cartography, his back turned from the corpse of his pupil.

Pain filled him, a sloppy, burning anger that consumed the shadow that once was Nathaniel Kurtzberg.

They had killed Marc; the only person Nathaniel had ever truly loved. They had killed him for the love they had shared. They had ripped away the tender moments between them.

 _You are angry._ The voice was soft and omnipresent, and seemed to hold the grief of the world within it.

“They killed Marc.” The choked-out words could not sum up the tide within him. “They said we were against God, that we were tainted by the devil…” grief and anger swelled, a near intolerable tide. “They said we would burn in hellfire for all eternity, but it is not true; it is THEY who should BURN, they who are the sinners!”

 _The emotion within you is that of the raging of water, of softness turned deadly due to circumstances you could barely control._ Blue and green swirled in his vision, curling patterns and quills each set with a pink lidless eye. _I cannot bring your love back to you, but if you seek it, I can offer to you revenge for love and life taken too soon._

In his mind’s eye, Nathaniel could still see Marc’s smile.

“I condemn them as they condemned us.”

Blue light started to crackle around him.

In the back of his mind, words rose, words that promised a vessel for his revenge.

They would pay.

His throat felt raw from screaming Marc’s name.

And yet still he opened his mouth to sing.

_“A swallow, sister to the tempest…”_

He could feel the air pressure drop suddenly.

“… _Mourning on wings, soaring above those heads in which she sorrowfully strays…”_

The words flowed like honey from his lips, and he tasted their sweetness as the clouds began to gather. Yes! The song that they had once sung together, a song to match the longing and anger within him.

_“A swallow bird, like a black dagger ripped from the winds chest,”_

Behind the melody he could hear the starting rumbles of thunder, and the sailor within him cringed. He stamped it down.

_“Weighed down by a sudden anchor of grief cast from an invisible vessel.”_

The rigging howled in the wind as though it too was mourning, the planks creaking and groaning as if beset by some great grief.

_“For everlasting whirling, for soundless anguish…”_

He could feel the rain that fell like the plague upon the Egyptians.

_“…For nests unfamiliar, for blaspheming of beauty.”_

Outside of the cocoon of light, the air was filled with the roar of the waves, so loud as to even drown out the shouts of the sailors. Nathaniel clung to Marc as the ship bucked upon the ocean, falling apart upon the raging sea of his wrath.

_“The swallow, black and brilliant,_

_Cast here by the devil.”_

Finally, the water enveloped all, and the song ended.

                                                                                                888

Blue.

He carried Marc’s body to the shore.

Laid carefully upon the sand, it looked like he was just another to lost soul to wash up with the wreckage of the ship they had once called home.

The ocean crashed too loud in his eyes.

Nathaniel’s breath hitched as he gently tucked the red bound notebook that contained their story into Marc’s red hooded jerkin. He traced the waterlogged leather spine. The pages were sodden, the words once written now illegible.

Nathaniel lent down to press a kiss to Marc’s blue lips one last time, wishing for some spark of warmth to magically reappear, but alas, the colour remained drained from his lover’s face, the only movement that of his dark hair in the maritime breeze. He grasped Marc’s cold hands, only for his fingers to tangle in the cord of the lucky charm still clasped in stiff fingers. Nathaniel carefully unhooked it and looped it over his own neck. Maybe a fragment of Marc’s soul still persisted as he had once believed it would. A fragment of soul that Nathaniel would guard with all of his heart for as long as he persisted.

He turned in the sand to gaze down at his tail, a sapphire blue expanse culminating in a lobed fin the colour of freshly spilled blood.

He was a merman now. A soulless creature, an evil creature meant only to prey upon humans.

And he couldn’t bring himself to care.

No, it was humans that were the monsters. And if he was to dirty himself by drinking the blood of sinners so be it.

But now,

To sleep.

And the merman, deep below the waves could dream of only one colour.

Red.

**Author's Note:**

> I am really sorry for killing gays, but it was destined to happen after the events of ‘Redemption of a sea monster.’  
> As always, that turned out to be way longer than what I intended to write.  
> The song is Jaskółka uwięziona, a Polish classic for grief and power.... https://miraculousstuffwotifound.tumblr.com/post/179328103215/jaskółka-uwięziona-a-swallow-imprisoned-music for more details and the full translation!  
> Also swallows were thought to carry the souls of dead sailors, and were a symbol of returning safe into port.  
> But on the bright side; why would I change Marc’s last name?  
> Well,  
> Do you believe in reincarnation?
> 
>  
> 
> (to be eventually written if I can get my life in order. Welp.)


End file.
